On 22/02/2011 04:49 PM, Darren New wrote:

> I read a while ago that while LOTOS 1-2-3 and visicalc were putting in
> ever-more sophisticated math stuff, MS went and looked at how people
> were actually using the product and realized some surprisingly large
> number of spreadsheets had no formulas at all. So MS made it easier to
> keep lists of stuff in Excel

That wouldn't surprise me.

> and that's part of why it won out over those others.

Perhaps. I can well imagine people being too stupid to work out how to 
use a proper database product...

>> that only one person can edit it at a time.
>
> Actually, I think nowadays you can set it up for multiple edits and
> it'll coordinate.

I've never seen that.

> Last I looked, Access was only one user at a time making changes too.
> The one guy would lean back in his chair and bellow "IS THERE ANYONE IN
> THE DATABASE?" That was their locking protocol.

I spent six months watching a group of three people in an office. They 
had an Access database, which everybody had constantly open all day. So 
clearly that's not the case.

On the other hand, I have seen "error - database in use", so I'm not 
sure what's up with that...

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